Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh's blog
Posted in Noach on Oct 19th, 2012
In Parashat Noach, humanity undergoes two great catastrophes. The first is the flood – the holocaust that annihilates all of humanity and all land-life except those who survive in Noach’s ark. The second catastrophe is the dispersal of humanity to all ends of the earth as a result of the collapse of the Tower of [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Aug 9th, 2011
There are two levels of “nothing,” absolute nothing and relative nothing, and two levels of “something,” intangible something and tangible something. Absolute nothing is the awareness that besides the absolute existence of God all is naught and that God’s absolute existence is absolutely incomprehensible; relative nothing is the state of nothing that precedes creation ex-nihilo; intangible [...]
Posted in Rectifying the Sense of Sight on Jul 10th, 2011
In Hebrew, the idiom “to see someone’s face” can mean either to appease him or to fight him. After winning the wrestling bout with Esau’s archangel, Jacob says, “for I have seen the angel of God face to face and my soul has been saved.” Several of the traditional commentaries explain that seeing face to [...]
Posted in Questions in the Bible on Jun 1st, 2011
In Hebrew, the question “where [am I/are you] from?” (מאין) contains the answer. “Where from?” literally reads “from nothing.” The first appearance in the Torah of the question “where from?” is in the story of Jacob on his way to Haran, about to meet and fall in love (at first sight) with Rachel. (He was [...]
Posted in Questions in the Bible on May 31st, 2011
There are three forms of the question “where?” in Biblical Hebrew. They first appear in the Torah in evolving order, both grammatically and numerically. The first form, ey (אי), comprises only two letters (perhaps the simplest syllable in the Hebrew language) and first appears in the question we contemplated above, “Where is Abel your brother” (אי [...]
Posted in Questions in the Bible on May 24th, 2011
King David asked the question “Who am I?” The Bible describes him as “reddish with beautiful eyes and goodly appearance.” Each of us has a soul-root. Ultimately, we all descend from Adam, and as such we each are rooted in one of his (spiritual) limbs. The soul of Adam is the origin of the middle [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 3rd, 2011
Don’t weaken your mind by trying too hard to understand things that are above your ability to comprehend. Our minds are limited, they function within a finite domain, a finite universe. As we mature and use our minds as best we can our mental universe expands, and the expansion factor grows, accelerates. But the universe [...]
Posted in Tweets from the year 5771 on Feb 24th, 2011
Meditative prayer lifts us up and out of our mundane reality. The early chasidim would meditate an hour, pray an hour, then meditate an additional hour. What is meditation? Breaking through hard shells, peeling away soft shells, and eating the fruit. * The 10 blessings of Isaac to Jacob are the connective intermediate between the [...]
Posted in Tweets from the year 5771 on Feb 24th, 2011
In the first account of creation the Torah describes man’s creation ex-nihilo. In the second account the Torah describes man’s formation. The Arizal says that the monkey is the intermediate between animal and man, an insight abstracting the evolutionary mindset of action. Thus we may say that in the World of Creation man comes from [...]
Posted in Tweets from the year 5771 on Feb 24th, 2011
God saved Jacob from his father-in-law Lavan, his brother Esau, and his “son-in-law” Shechem (his daughter’s rapist), three generations. Jacob is the all-inclusive Jewish soul. From him we learn that each of us has an enemy in the previous, this, and the next generations. The common denominator of the three enemies is that they all [...]